Hey!

Welcome to She Came in Through the Bathroom Window!

Here is a space where you can read about my life as an older student, an expat living in the Netherlands, a couple who is living between two countries with their two cats and a traveller who is always planning about the next destination.

Social media, especially Instagram has become a big part of my life since I’ve joined a little over a year ago. Some may even claim (okay, I claim) that I’m even addicted to it. They (yeah yeah, I) have a point.

If Instagram is praised as a ‘community designed to inspire you and share your aesthetic passion with like-minded people’, then why do I often feel so overwhelmed by it, rather than inspired? Have all the positive rays of artistry and beauty this app provides completely missed me?

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With approximately 700 million followers, Instagram is huge. With influencers and content creators andfeed editors; a whole new generation of ‘successful people who made it’ are popping everywhere. If you can make it there, you’ll make it anywhere. As someone who is a humble owner of an account with 2 thousand-something followers, I am not even close to ‘making’ anything. Normally, that is fine. Heck, it is more than fine, it’s great! But then, why am I feeling like I’m missing out on some secret club where I just can’t seem to get an invitation to?

I mean, with free products to ‘unbox’, invitations to ‘openings’, restaurants to ‘try out’ and parties to ‘check out’ and if you are one of those who really made it, workshops and photography or styling workshops to ‘set up’ does look like the new glittery life. And, who wouldn’t want to be a part of that? Punk is dead but Insta Glam is here to stay! One like at a time.

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When I first decided to join Instagram, I knew I wanted to do more than just taking selfies or posting random moments from my daily life. I wanted to post about what impressed me and made me admire. That was, this little city where I live now: Delft. The classic Dutch architecture and the little streets simply made me happy. I loved it in the summer, even more in the fall. With including my trips to other places here and there, I still mostly post photos of this cute Randstad corner.

Sounds and feels simple enough. Well, apparently not. As much as I would like to convince myself that I am doing this for my own pure pleasure, my hand (and my mind) still wanders every couple of minutes to see how many people liked my photo. Some kind of momentary relief, a hint of feeling appreciated.

Paying attention to which hashtags to use, watching the time to decide when to post that day… The lighting is off in this one. My feed is too crowded. Why can’t I snap photos like this girl? I have no set theme. He has how many followers? I should post everyday. Wait, what? I’ve lost how many followers? But, why?

Waste of my time, my energy and more importantly, my creativity. All the things I thought I would get from Instagram has turned me into someone who compares what I choose for the world to see with other people’s creations. An endless search for something so subjective yet somehow through the Instagram’s ‘like system’, so uniform.

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So how to fix this? Actually, that is still something I’m yet to discover and practice everyday. Maybe take a small break to reset my mind and use this time to recharge. Who knows? Being an Instagram celebrity may not be in my future but I will continue to smother people with my semi-daily snappings of the city I live in and some others I occasionally visit.

-Ceren

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If you would like to see more photos of the Netherlands (and contribute to my addiction), come and find me on Instagram @crn.spymn !